阳光背面的生意 Honeysuckle blooms help China solar industry flourish
As she plucks the weeds ensnaring a nascent crop of honeysuckle, farmer Yang Xinfeng makes an unlikely pioneer in the global renewable energy revolution.
正在为金银花幼株除草的农民杨新凤（音译），出人意料地成了全球可再生能源革命的先锋。
This year China will overtake Germany to become the world’s biggest installer of solar panels but as companies increasingly struggle to secure the vast land banks they need for solar farms, they are turning to an innovative solution: growing everything from plants to hairy crabs underneath the solar cells.
今年，中国将超过德国，成为全球太阳能电池板安装量最大的国家。然而，由于各企业越来越难以获得修建太阳能发电厂所需的巨大土地库存，它们正转而采取一种创新解决方案：在太阳能电池板底下发展各种种植养殖业，包括养殖毛蟹。
This helps them to get around government restrictions on the conversion of agricultural land, win the support of local farmers and generate an extra income stream.
此举帮他们绕开了政府对变更农业用地用途的限制，赢得了当地农民的支持，并带来了额外的收入流。
“This makes a lot of sense as solar can be incorporated into agricultural land pretty effectively and non-invasively,” says Charles Yonts, an energy analyst at stockbroker CLSA in Hong Kong.
香港券商里昂证券(CLSA)能源分析师杨立志(Charles Yonts)表示：“这种做法非常合理，因为它能将太阳能发电非常有效地整合进农业用地，不会侵占农业生产的空间。”
At the Xicun power plant in Yunnan province, Hong Kong-listed CLP has teamed up with local farmers to grow honeysuckle, which is used in traditional medicine, below the solar cells that sprawl over hill after hill in this mountainous region.
在云南省的西村发电站，香港上市公司中电集团(CLP)已经与当地农民合作，在太阳能电池板底下种植传统中药材金银花。在这个多山地区，一块块太阳能电池板铺满了一个个山头。
“It’s not easy to look after this crop because I didn’t know about it before but I’m making much more money now,” says Ms Yang, whose earnings have trebled to Rmb3,000 ($473) per month since she started working for the honeysuckle contractor brought in by CLP. “In the past I had to take on extra jobs to survive but now I’m more secure and I’m planning to buy a new sofa and refrigerator.”
杨女士表示：“过去我对这种作物不了解，照看它们并不容易。不过，如今我赚的钱多多了。”自从杨女士开始为中电集团引进的金银花承包商工作以来，她的收入已经增长两倍，达到每月3000元人民币（合473美元）。“过去我得再打些工才够生活，如今我不那么担心生活了。我还打算买新沙发和新电冰箱。”
As it doubles the capacity of the Xicun plant to 100MW, enough to power thousands of homes in the nearby city of Dali, CLP is also working on a similar project in another part of China where it will rear hairy crabs, an expensive delicacy, in ponds under its solar panels.
中电集团将西村发电站的装机容量扩大了一倍，达到100兆瓦，足以为附近大理市数千个家庭提供电力。目前，该集团还在中国另一个地方建设类似项目，在太阳能电池板下的池塘里养殖特色水产毛蟹。
“Solar plants take up a big area and one of the hardest challenges we face is obtaining land near major population centres,” says Roger Yang, the company’s director for new energy in China. “Integrating food production helps us to convince the farmers to lease the land at a reasonable price and get local government support.”
中电集团中国区新能源高级副总裁杨明才(Roger Yang)表示：“太阳能发电站需要占用很多土地，我们面临的一大挑战就在于如何获取靠近主要人口聚集地的土地。将食物生产整合进来，能帮助我们说服那些农民以合理价格将土地租给我们，并能得到政府的支持。”
With the price of solar panels having collapsed because of massive oversupply, a growing number of Chinese companies see an opportunity to make money while also earning political brownie points by helping the government meet its ambitious renewable energy targets.
随着太阳能电池板因供应过剩而价格暴跌，越来越多的中国企业看到了机遇——在赚钱的同时，通过帮助政府实现其宏伟的可再生能源目标获得政治上的加分。
Market research group IHS predicts that China will add a record 17.3 gigawatts of solar panels this year, slightly less than the total installed capacity of Italy, the world’s fifth-biggest generator of power from the sun.
市场研究集团IHS预计，今年中国太阳能电池板新增装机容量将达到创纪录的17.3吉瓦，略低于全球第五大太阳能发电国意大利的总装机容量。
Even after this breakneck expansion, China will only be producing 1 per cent of its power output from solar but it will be far and away the world’s biggest generator.
即使是在这样迅猛的扩张之后，中国的太阳能发电量也仅将占到其总发电量的1%。不过，中国的太阳能发电量仍是全球第一，并且远远把其他国家甩在身后。
While China has vast expanses of available land in its western desert regions, it lacks the high-voltage transmission lines to bring electricity to its main cities and such a network would require billions of dollars and years of planning to build.
尽管中国在其西部荒漠地带有广阔的土地可用于发电，但中国缺乏将电力输送至主要城市的高压输电线。这样的电网不仅需要花费数十亿美元，还需要多年的规划才能建成。
A government drive to solve the problem by putting more “distributed” solar cells on the roofs of houses and factories has stalled because of the lack of a smart grid system that allows people and businesses to feed power into the grid and get paid easily.
由于缺乏能让个人和企业较容易地向电网馈电并获得酬劳的智能电网，政府通过在房屋和工厂顶部安装更多“分布式”太阳能电池的解决方案也遇到了阻碍。
In the meantime, more companies around China are launching integrated agriculture ventures, with plans to grow everything from mushrooms to animal feed in the shadow of solar cells.
与此同时，中国各地的更多企业正在推出与农业结合的光伏项目，打算在太阳能电池底下发展各种种植养殖业，包括蘑菇种植。
While CLP, which is part-owned and chaired by Hong Kong billionaire Michael Kadoorie, has long experience of building conventional and renewable energy plants around Asia, many of the other Chinese companies expanding into solar have a less impressive track record.
中电集团由香港亿万富翁米高嘉道理爵士(Sir Michael Kadoorie)持有部分股票并担任董事长。尽管中电集团拥有多年在亚洲各地建设常规能源电站和可再生能源电站的经验，但其他许多将业务拓展至太阳能领域的中国企业则没有这么亮眼的经历。
Recent entrants include Evergrande, a property developer, China Oceanwide, a finance group, and Huiyuan, China’s largest private juice maker. Controversial solar panel maker Hanergy regularly appears at promotional forums for greenhouse-mounted solar panels.
最近进入该产业的公司包括地产开发商恒大(Evergrande)、金融集团中国泛海(China Oceanwide)、以及中国最大的民营果汁生产商汇源(Huiyuan)。争议较大的太阳能电池板制造商汉能(Hanergy)，则时常出现在推介安装于温室上的太阳能电池板的论坛上。
As in most countries, solar plants in China can only turn a profit because of government subsidies but it can currently take a year or more for new plants to win the necessary approvals before they receive their first payments.
和多数国家的情况一样，中国的太阳能发电站只有在得到政府补贴的情况下才会盈利。然而，新电站目前需要花费一年甚至一年以上的时间，才能获得必要的批准、收到头一笔付款。
Frank Xie, a solar analyst for IHS in Shanghai, says those with strong financial backing or international businesses can ride out the subsidy delay but some weaker companies will struggle to complete their projects, particularly given the wider slowdown.
IHS驻上海的光伏产业分析师谢锋(Frank Xie)表示，那些资金实力雄厚、或有国际业务的企业有能力挺过补贴发放延迟期，而部分较弱的公司却难以完成自己的项目——尤其是考虑到整体经济放缓的背景。
Mr Yonts of CLSA says that despite the potential for financial problems in the short term, China’s huge solar investment will transform the industry globally by driving down costs, which are currently about 60 per cent higher than coal-fired power.
里昂证券的杨立志表示，尽管短期内存在出现资金问题的可能性，中国对太阳能产业巨大的投资会降低成本，从而改变全球太阳能产业的面貌。目前，太阳能发电的成本比火电高大约60%。
“That will make solar particularly attractive for countries like India and Indonesia,” which both suffer from damaging electricity shortages, he says.
他说，“这会令太阳能发电对印度和印尼这样的国家尤其有吸引力”，这两个国家都存在困扰经济的电力短缺。
